


the lies we tell ourselves

by plumedy



Series: Force Meditations [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Adoption, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Diaspora, Fluff, Force Bond (Star Wars), Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, ManDadlorian, Mandalorian Culture, Post-Season/Series 01, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:14:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22866154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumedy/pseuds/plumedy
Summary: Being able to speak to the Child doesn’t make things easier. In some ways it makes them… more difficult.A sequel to Solus, but can be read as a stand-alone.
Relationships: Baby Yoda & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Series: Force Meditations [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643656
Comments: 22
Kudos: 195





	the lies we tell ourselves

The child’s presence is a quiet hum in the back of his mind. If Din Djarin thought that their newly-forged mental connection would dispel the mystery surrounding the Child, he was wrong.

He spends hours sitting cross-legged on the alusteel floor of the Crest cargo hold, trying to formulate his questions in a way suited to be answered through this new kind of wizardry.

“What are you?”

The Child chirps quietly, a sound not unlike laughter. _Silly_ , he seems to be saying. _Don’t you see me right in front of you?_

A blur of sensation washes over him like a physical blow to the beskar of his breastplate. A playful sparkle on the surface of a little steel ball. The brilliant burning of a pink gaseous nebula just emerging in the sidelight of the Crest. Beautiful things. Things that make him – happy. _Happiness_.

Then there are other things; not-beautiful, not-good. Cold sweat on his brow. The invisible energy around him twists, angry orange like cords of fire. His hands around Cara Dune’s neck, choking, go away, go away, _don’t hurt him_. This makes him afraid. _Fear_.

Then, suddenly, an image of his helmet, half-turned. The beskar gleams under the light of the endless constellations. He can hear his own breathing through the vocoder. This makes him- _Love, love, I_ love _you-_

He withdraws, snapping out of their shared mental space.

“Sorry, kid,” mutters he, running one gloved finger over the edge of the Child’s leaf-like ear. “It was a stupid question.”

What was he expecting, really? That the Child would give him the standard intergalactic designation for his species?

Being able to speak to the Child doesn’t make things easier. In some ways it makes them… more difficult.

The overwhelming feeling of trust and affection is burned into his brain, light years-deep. It’s a mirror image of something within his own heart he keeps lying to himself about and succeeds at it about as well as he’d succeed at ignoring a spot of sandstorm out in the Dune Sea. Gods, he doesn’t _deserve_ the kid’s loyalty. He doesn’t.

The Child looks at him seriously, his large eyelids slowly moving up and down the surface of his glassy eyes. _Did you want something else? Have I done something wrong?_

“No,” the Mandalorian hastens to reassure him. “It’s not your fault – it’s mine. I’m just being di’kutla. Dumb.”

The kid coos at him dubiously, as if to express disbelief that his guardian could be anything less than brilliant. The Mandalorian sighs.

“We’ll try one more time and then have some food, okay?”

The Child doesn’t nod – he doubts the gesture is in the kid’s vocabulary – but he clearly understands “food” well enough, as evidenced by a shy toothy smile and the turning of the leaf-ears. Foolishly, the Mandalorian smiles back even though his mouth is hidden beneath the beskar. He hopes the Child’s powers allow him to feel the sentiment behind the smile, if not to see it.

“I have something special for you today, kid. I hope you’ll like it. Now that we’re officially a clan, I thought – I thought we might celebrate.” He’s rambling. Anything to quell the churning in his stomach, to stop himself from thinking about the burning feeling of _love_ he can still feel in his chest.

The truth is, he doesn’t want to question the Child any further. He doesn’t want any answers. Every layer removed from this mystery is that much less time they get to spend together. He has been trying so hard to get it right; but what will happen when he does?

He’s gripped by a sudden irrational terror that somehow, in some way, the Child will be able to tell him exactly where to go.

But that’s what he’s here for. That’s his ke’gyce. No way around it.

And so he concentrates.

“Where did you come from?”

He tries to convey a sense of _belonging_. _Home._ And, because he realizes exactly how this could go wrong: _past home. Places-long-ago_.

The Child frowns. This time the feeling radiating from him is quiet, uncertain. The warm darkness of the floating crib. Harsh voices speaking in what the Mandalorian vaguely recognizes as Weequay. The smell of sun-heated dust and fried meat.

“No.” He shakes his head. “Before that.”

A blinding gas-blue gleam on the spaulder of someone’s armor. He identifies the make as Katarn but cannot specify further. It is an obsolete armor class – he’d hardly recognize it if the history of modern warfare weren’t drilled so perfectly into the Mando’ade of his tribe.

The kid was in the hands of the Republic at some point, then.

Someone’s life, extinguished. From the Child’s point of view, it feels like a great light flickering and going out.

“Before that,” says the Mandalorian, through the bile rising in his throat. There’s too much death and suffering in the Child’s past. The memories skip and stutter like a corrupted holovid, from aftershock to aftershock of loss.

A tropical landscape. The Child chirps in delight, his little three-clawed hands sinking into a cluster of iridescent blue fruit. Someone’s radiant presence hovers over him. A tattered auropyle blanket is draped over his body. A genderless, soft voice chitters something at him, in a tone of mild reproach but with no heat behind it.

There’s no face to go with the voice; just a feeling of safety and contentment, a sense of being embraced even without physical touch.

Then the memory fades, and suddenly there’s nothing but the twilight of the Crest’s lower deck and the beeping of the navigation console upstairs.

“Why’d you stop?”

The Child looks at the floor, his claws fiddling half-heartedly with the folds of his robes.

“You’ve forgotten,” says the Mandalorian – less of a question and more of a statement. His answer is a little mournful chirp. “Oh, kid.”

Tiny arms embrace one of his knees and don’t quite manage to lock around the curve of cold metal. He leans forward, picks the Child up, and presses the little body against his breastplate. Then he rocks back and forth, ever so slightly.

He knows what it is to forget. The faces of his own parents are a blur in his mind, lost beneath the memories of white stone, the smell of spices, the sound of drawling songs in a language he can no longer speak.

 _I will be happy to find his kind,_ the Mandalorian lies to himself. _I want to fulfil my ke’gyce._

Somehow, where the Child is concerned, such self-deception has become a common occurrence. _It doesn’t matter,_ he tried to convince himself after the killing of the Mudhorn. But later, when he recounted the events to the Armorer, something within him broke at the words _it did not know it was my enemy_.

 _I only care about the beskar_ , he told himself as he handed the Child over to the Imperials. The guilt of that action stays with him.

 _I’m acting out of duty_ , he thought as he left the kid on the Crest in Mos Eisley. _I am not afraid for him_. His next memory is punching the wall of the Crest’s bridge hard enough to bloody his knuckles in an attempt to stop the thoughts of what would’ve happened if he’d taken longer to return.

“Hey,” he murmurs, putting the Child back down. “You’ve done well, kid. You’ve given me some information to analyse. It doesn’t matter if you don’t remember more. Enough of that now, okay?

“Let’s go – I remember promising you something.”

He stands up and walks over to the gun cabinet. The Child’s interest is clearly piqued, as evidenced by the pitter-patter of his feet right behind the Mandalorian’s right boot.

The Mandalorian punches in the code and looks down at him.

“You think I’m about to show you some of my weapons, huh?” His voice crackles warmly through the vocoder. “No, I don’t think you’d be particularly interested in that.”

It takes a bit of effort to reach the miniature lever concealed underneath some ammo boxes – the Mandalorian thinks, not for the first time, that the Crest doesn’t have nearly enough automatics installed. But eventually the well-oiled metal slides aside with a click, and a small hidden compartment opens below the gun cabinet.

“Emergency supplies,” explains he, waving a teal vacuum-sealed bag at the Child. The Child is watching him closely, the big-eared head tilted to one side. “But not just any emergency supplies.”

He sits down on the floor again, leaning his back comfortably against the wall, and beckons the kid closer. There’s a short hiss as he breaks the seals on the bag. He takes one of his gloves off and fishes out something that looks like a thin, soft sheet of paper.

“Haashun,” he says. “Mandalorian parchment-bread. It’s supposed to be see-through if you make it properly.”

The Child reaches for the bread with his little hands, and the Mandalorian lets him have it. Dim yellow light from the LEDs on the wall above falls on the haashun and reveals the Child’s shadow behind it. One large dark eye, widened in delight, is half-visible through the starchy sheet. The kid gives a long trilling coo.

“It’s special to our people,” says the Mandalorian. His chest feels warm – it’s embarrassing how mushy he’s gone since he met the kid. What would Paz say? “Give it here, I’ll show you one better.”

He reaches into his pocket and produces a hydrogel capsule. Squeezing the hydrogel onto the bread makes it suddenly puff up into a silky cloud of golden dough.

The Child falls back with a soft _thump_. “Ah!” He utters, and stares at the haashun as if he’s never seen anything more transfixing.

“Try it,” encourages the Mandalorian, pinching off a bite-sized chunk. The kid accepts it and immediately stuffs it into his mouth, smiling around it.

While he’s chewing the haashun, the Mandalorian once again reaches into the bag and, in a gesture of a street magician, pulls out a yellowed plasteel flask.

“And this is shig,” he says. “A kind of cold herbal thing.”

“Mm-mm,” the Child responds through the bread.

“Don’t choke on that, womp rat. All in due time.” He takes a swig from the flask; it’s icy and tastes vaguely like lemon juice and swamp water. Probably not the tastiest drink out there, but he wouldn’t exchange it for the finest Corellian whiskey. And the Child – the Child eats frogs. He doubts the swampy taste will be a problem.

They make a fine duo, he and the kid. He reaches out his hand, still gloveless, and strokes the crown of the little green head.

“You’ll make a great Mandalorian one day,” he tells the Child. _I love you_ , he means. _I love you, I love you._

The Child’s presence is a quiet hum in the back of his mind. He finds himself reflecting on this presence, on the power it implies. In his years of traversing the galaxy he’s never experienced anything like it. He remembers briefly contemplating giving the kid a name; but now this feels unnecessary, superfluous to him. There’s no need for a name because there’s no one else like this Child. And he doesn’t really mean the fact that the kid’s the only one of his species. Even if they were to discover more creatures like this, the Child would always be the only Child to the Mandalorian.

He finds himself thinking that perhaps – perhaps – even if he hands the kid over to someone else, they can still maintain this mental link. Who is to say that is not within the Child’s power? There’s something about the warmth touching his mind that makes distance and time unimportant. Something that says _always_.

 _I would like nothing better_ , he thinks. For once, this is the truth.


End file.
